the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

In the South Pacific we saw sharks every day, including this pack off the coral reef of Rangiroa. Photo by Peter McBrideTwelve thousand people live among the 78 coralatolls spread over 2,600 kilometers. Known as the“Dangerous Archipelago” by seafarers going backas far as Magellan, who first sighted the chain in1521, the low-lying reefs have sunk countlessships. Our biggest worry during our two-monthexploration of paradise was the daily presence ofour companions through the coral: sharks.Whether we were diving to 50 meters or justkicking through crystal shallows among the reefs,the sharks were with us. Most were of the nonaggressivereef variety, but we were occasionallyvisited by big lemonsand grays. One day,off an atoll called Rangiroa,we swam amid300 of the three-meterlongcritters as theybumped our kayaks andour legs and nibbled atpaddles.Phase four, theSouth American trip,took place in the fallof 2003, when I took ateam of six—two Americans,one Kiwi, oneBriton, two Chileans—on a nearly 4,000-kilometerloop throughSouth America’s Altiplano(northern Chile,northern Argentina,southern Bolivia), aplace where the seaused to be. We beganthe expedition at sealevel, paddling in roughwater along the 60-meter-high limestone cliffs offthe coast of Chile and ended it atop the 5,915-meterLicancabur Volcano on the Bolivian border.After leaving the water to make the climb to thepeak—pulling our kayaks behind us on a portagecart—we found evidence of prehistoric ocean everywhere,from remnants of coral and shells mixedin with the high, dry sand to the biggest salt lakein the world, Salar de Uyuni, which is spread overmore than 12,500 square kilometers in Bolivia.Searching for water in the driest place on Earth,dragging kayaks into the 4,300-meter-high desertmay seem quixotic, but we were drawn by theintense beauty of the high, mineral-rich lakes, aswell as by the thought that every step we took hadonce been covered by ocean.Each expedition has brought its own hardships.In the cold seas of the Aleutians, we figured that ifwe capsized we had 15 minutes to live. The SouthPacific, as blue and perfect as it was, delivereda nasty staph infection that spread to four of ourfive team members. The Altiplano was high anddry, sucking air from our lungs as we paddled andclimbed. In Croatia, camps on the 1,200 islandswere few and far between, which meant sleepingon tiny spits of rockand sand, or on cementboat docks. Butby far the most physicallyexhausting wasour fifth trip, in 2004,when photographerPeter McBride, environmentalistJ. MichaelFay, and two Africans,Sophiano Etouck andAime Jessy, joined mein Gabon.In this small WestAfrican nation, wecircumnavigated thecountry’s first nationalpark, Loango. The combinationof unrelenting38ºC heat; little food;long, long days on theocean; and a three-dayjungle portage took aheavy toll. For me, thephysical challenge washeightened by the factthat I was traveling with Fay, who had gained acclaima few years back for spending 453 daysstraight walking across the Congo.Yet, as always, there were astonishing rewards.After paddling into high winds across wide lakes,then up a 70-kilometer river—spending one nightsleeping in our kayaks in a flooded forest—wespent several days on the ocean. The typical dayended with a beautiful equatorial sunset formingbehind us, and we sat in the surf zone, not quiteready to paddle in to the beach, despite havingbeen in the kayaks for eight hours. As we backpaddled,being gently pushed toward the sandythe explorers journal